This is a very early description of this concept; I thnk that those who are looking forward to uploading to a mechanical body should pay careful attention to the feature list.

It was tall, ten feet from the soles of its metal feet to the top of its cone-shaped head. It moved with a mechanical precision and it looked like a demented parody of a man. It thudded to a halt, and from its twin scanning-lenses ruby lights flickered and pulsed.

"Doctor Lasser?" Its voice was cold, inhuman, like the sounds made by vibrating plastic and electrical current...

"Decision of Comain." The thing raised its articulated arm and held out a thin sheaf of papers. "Take them."

Lasser took the papers from the metal hand and stood waiting while the thing turned and thudded from the room.

"That was a metamen," Lasser said grimly. "The Matriarch probably sent it as a reminder to obey the predictions of Comain..."

"Those things," whispered Curt sickly, "men?"

"The brains of men in mechanical bodies. Mostly those who have died by accident, or those who deliberately chose the potential immortality of a robot-like life to inevitable death. They are the guards of Comain, the servants of the Matriarch, emotionless, unfeeling perfect servants and police.

Tall, with articulated limbs and a cone-shaped head... the para-beam seemed to emit from an orifice in their chest and the ruby light of their scanning eyes flared like the fires of hell.

What would it be like to be a metamen?

They could probably communicate between themselves by radio, They could see by means of the scanning eyes, hear via their diaphragms, even speak by transmitted electrical impulses, but they could never feel. They would never know true emotion, because emotion is controlled by the glands and they had no glands. They were prisoners, trapped in their mobile hells, a few pounds of protoplasm served by machinery instead of living flesh.